Bleak House

Bleak House, novel by Charles Dickens, published serially in 1852–53 and in book form in 1853 and considered by some critics to be the author’s best work. Bleak House is the story of several generations of the Jarndyce family who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in the settlement of the lawsuit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. It is pointedly critical of England’s Court of Chancery, in which cases could drag on through decades of convoluted legal maneuvering.